TECHNOLOGY

Radar technology has been with us for over seventy years, yet many of the fundamental elements of radar design have changed little over that time. The vast majority of radars are based on mechanical scanning – a rotating antenna which sends out a pulse of radio waves, receives the echo and so can calculate the range and direction of a target. This gives the classic “blip” on a radar screen every few seconds.

Aveillant’s Holographic Radar system differs fundamentally from both traditional mechanically scanned radars and from more advanced electronically scanned systems. Holographic Radar floodlights a volume of interest on transmit, and forms multiple simultaneous receive beams that fill the illuminated volume.

Holographic Radar also requires only a very narrow bandwidth, making it very spectrum efficient compared to traditional radars.

By dwelling on targets continuously and for long periods, not only is detection performance against multiple targets excellent but a rich data set containing target specific information enables high discrimination performance.

The information that can be extracted from the radar relating to individual targets is exceptionally detailed, and using advanced signal processing techniques it lends itself to very high levels of target discrimination and low false alarm rates. In addition to target location and track, very fine Doppler resolution allows target movement to be measured.

Holographic radar essentially digitises the entire volume of airspace it sees, a fundamental advance on any form of scanning radar.